With the recent series of Battlebots I've rediscovered my love of robot combat and am looking at adding it to my (already far too extensive) list of hobbies. I've visited the USA regularly over the last 15y and the first couple of times I went I avidly watched Battlebots, Robot Wars and Robotica. I kinda forgot about it until I heard about the revival, but after watching it with my kids we're all hooked! And then I found out there was actually a bunch of people doing this in Australia.

I know there really isn't any activity in SA, but I was planning on slowly putting together a robot as a fun project with my eldest son. Initially I was going to make a beetleweight first then try making a featherweight sportsman that I could look at going interstate and competing with, but I've ended up with some motors and wheels that seem too heavy for the former so I've decided to just try making the bigger bot.

Steve

Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:36 pm

PhilipExperienced Roboteer

Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 3826
Location: Queensland near Brisbane

A featherweight sportsman is a good idea. You could potentially have an event without a full arena.

Do you know what sort of weapon you would like to have?_________________So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

Fri Sep 11, 2015 4:19 am

evil_steve

Joined: 06 Sep 2015
Posts: 296
Location: Adelaide, SA

Definitely going to be some sort of lifter, as: a) I'm going to be building it with a 7yo, so I don't want any sort of kinetic energy weapon; and b) I can test it without worrying about an arena or similar.

Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:11 am

James2

Joined: 07 May 2015
Posts: 115
Location: South Australia

there is a few of us here in sa doing non kinetic matches in the ant weight class, (will be progressing to beetle soon as well).

Fri Sep 25, 2015 5:05 pm

evil_steve

Joined: 06 Sep 2015
Posts: 296
Location: Adelaide, SA

I've got a box of random gearmotors, most 12 or 24 volt but many are missing info on voltage, gear ratios, RPM etc. So I've decided to start testing them using a sophisticated test rig (ie a $2.50 plastic container from Cheap as Chips) and custom built, precision engineered wheels (bodged together from chopping board and a non-slip mat).